15 Minute diy fm aerial

[eardrummer]

I had been meaning to make a decent fm aerial for a while as I was using the digital TV aerial in the loft, which isn't great for fm reception. Ideally I would put something on the roof but since I'm renting and don't plan to stay long I decided to try a cheap option with what I could find lying around. I found some dimensions online for a cubial type aerial here www.wryr.org/Antenna_instructions.pdf and thought it was worth a try.

This only took about 15 minutes to build, using just 2 pieces of wood, some 1.5mm electrical cable, coaxial cable and a few coaxial male & female connectors. I cut the cable to the digital aerial in the loft and fitted the connectors so that aerials can be easily swapped. The two pieces of wood have holes drilled through the ends to pass the cable through, which is then pulled tight and held with cable ties. The coaxial cable is then just soldered on one end to the core and one end to the screen.

I played around with the positioning for a few min and I was surprised to find the results were very good. I am able to get about twice as many stations as with the tv aerial, and the stations I could get before have a significantly better signal.

It's quite fun to see how certain aerials can improve things and next project I think I will make a 4 element type and see how that works. - If anyone has any good plans or dimensions for a good fm aerial that they want to share send them this way

Cubial fm aerial.jpg

[Firebottle]

Here is a calculator to work out the sizes for a multi element cubical quad antenna:

http://www.qsl.net/yt1vp/CUBICAL%20Q...CALCULATOR.htm

Alan

[eardrummer]

Thanks Alan that's exactly the sort of thing I was looking for - might need a bigger loft..!

Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk 2

[bobbasrah]

What Alan said. But watch the bandwidth limitation as the element thickness comes into play, try some quarter inch aluminium rod, bends easily.
If you feel experimental, try bending the same rod in a 3 to 1 ellipse when it is like 0 it is horizontally polarised when fed bottom end, better gain....
Bazooka balun anyone.....
You may be surprised what additional gain you get without directors, even with just the reflector...